The present invention relates to the field of multimedia processing and, more particularly, to distinguishing between user physical exertion biometric feedback and user emotional interest in a media stream.
As technology becomes more sophisticated, companies desire to create more “smart” multimedia devices which account for user's needs and wants. These “smart” devices, such as camcorders, cameras, and media players, can respond intelligently to various environmental and user based stimuli. Stimuli, from a user, such as physical movement, speech, and emotional interest are extremely useful to allowing these devices to react. While many of these stimuli are easily determined, user emotional interest can be difficult to assess.
One possible technique for determining user interest relies on collecting and monitoring biometric data such as user vital signs and physiological states. Despite its technical possibilities, conventional devices rarely attempt to determine emotional interest based upon biometric data, which may be a result of current techniques producing excessive false positives. False positives can result from physical exertions and other situational factors. For instance, when a user is engaged in physical activity, collected biometric data can produce misleading conclusions. For example, heart rate data collected from a person listening to music while jogging is expected to be greater than an at-rest heart rate. Since an elevated heart rate in absence to other factors (such as physical exertion) is indicative of emotional interest, false positives can easily occur due to the physical exertions, for which conventional implementations fail to account.
While other techniques exist for determining user interest, these techniques lack the benefits of automation and simplicity possible to achieve through a physical biometric based technique. For example, one alternative technique determines user interest based on historic behavior. This alternative technique can rely on repeated interaction with media, and may only provide results after an extended period of time. Another technique can depend on allowing a user to manually indicate interest in media. Manual techniques requiring user input can be time consuming and tedious for the user, yielding only marginally useful results. As such it is often neglected by users.